Pat McGowan (Reagan Youth) Interview (July 2008)

I really could have sworn I already posted this one a long time ago but I guess not. Here's Pat, the new singer of Reagan Youth giving some perspective on his role in the band. It's a good read, particularly the part about them playing an Oi! Fest a little while back.

Bill Molloy: What exactly was the impetus behind the band re-forming initially?

Pat McGowan: Basically… (pause) Uh, Paul would be the best person to answer that question but I can answer with what he says. He just wanted to get it together. It was supposed to be only for one show, when we originally got together, just to do it for the sake of it. It snowballed into more after that. Paul felt like he had more music to play and to make it a tribute to Dave Insurgent, his best friend since he was a little kid and doing the band. He felt it was the right time to come back because of the way things are in the world. All the songs have great messages and all of Dave’s lyrics are still poignant today so it was a good time to come back. It wasn’t meant to go on so long but people kept asking for more and now it’s snowballed into a new Reagan Youth album in the process.

Bill: Oh really?

Pat: Yeah, we’re working on the new album right now.

Bill: That’s awesome. That was actually one of the questions I had for you. I was reading some interviews and Paul mentioned he was working on new material but wasn’t sure what was coming of it. So you guys are actually working on them now?

Pat: Yeah yeah yeah, we just came back from Germany and at every show we played a new song. We played a couple of songs that are ready and some that are just half done, so we’re getting to work on that. We’ve kind of got our fingers on twenty different things; we want to play shows but we’re also trying to get the album written. Basically, the new album is coming together from all of us but Paul wants to do it about the life and times of Dave Insurgent, an album based on his life, with the way things went for him and all the phases of it. We’ll be playing new songs and probably by the time we come out to play the fest we’ll have a few new songs peppered into the set with all the old originals.

Bill: What was the crowd reaction to the new songs? Were they digging them or?

Pat: Yeah, basically. The one new song called “In the First of the Hour,” once or twice we didn’t mention it was a new song, and people thought it was an old Reagan Youth song they didn’t know. So people have been really getting into it on the first time hearing it, singing a long. It’s going to like the last Reagan Youth album where it’s all different styles, you know. There was never one consistent “This is the Reagan Youth sound” you know? There was just too much, their songs came from all over the place, all kinds of different inspiration. One song will sound like an old school Reagan Youth song, some will have the, you know (pause)

Bill: The weird acid vibe to it?

Pat: Ha, yeah, the weird acid sort of vibe. Some songs are slow, some songs are fast, some songs are in the middle, some songs are just grooves, you know?

Bill: That’s cool. This kind of going back to the first thing that I asked about, but did you the guys for a long time before they asked you to start singing with them?

Pat: No, basically Paul… wait, hold on a second.

Bill: Ok.

Pat: (indistinguishable chatter) What was I going to say? When I…

(Person outside says something)

Pat: (to the other person) Ha, I’m doing a phone interview for the band! I’m actually at a wake right now.

Bill: Oh shit! I’m sorry!

Pat: Yeah, it’s a friend of my girlfriend’s family.

Bill: Oh shit, if you need to call back later that’s fine.

Pat: No no no, it’s totally cool we’re just getting ready to go actually. What was I saying? Paul was still floating around in New York and he ran into a girl I’m friends with, and she became the manager and they were trying out singers. She called me and asked me if I wanted to try out so I went down and I sang for Paul. I’d been a Reagan Youth fan so I was like “oh my god” and thinking it was cool just to try out but they said “no, you sound great” so they took me in. Like I said it was supposed to be one show and then it kept going, so I had to step into Dave’s shoes and try to sing these songs the best I can. My reaction to it was shock at first. I was like “I don’t know if I want to do that!” you know? It’s such a massive thing. I’ve kind of adopted the songs and made them my own while at the same time making sure that people remember who was the original singer of this band, who wrote the lyrics, you know?

Bill: Yeah.

Pat: Does that answer the question?

Bill: Yeah, it does. Another thing I noticed with Al, Javier and Paul was that the three of them never played together in the original incarnation, but they were all in the band at various times. Were there any problems getting on the same page with that? Were you around for the initial rehearsals?

Pat: Well there have been a lot of people in Reagan Youth over the years.

Bill: Yeah, a ton.

Pat: The original lineup, if you want to go back to the real original, the guys they had when they got the band together in high school, it was always Dave and Paul and two other people. The thing about Al and Javier is Al played the bass on the first album and then Javier played the drums on the second album. So they were both there and wrote the songs. Like, Al wrote songs like “No Class” and “I Hate Hate,” he was a contributor to a lot of great songs. It wasn’t too hard, they both played a lot with the band, you know? There was never any friction or anything like that. It was natural, they both knew the people and the history of the band, and Al and Javier have become great friends through the band.

Bill: I was looking through some of the older tour dates on your website and one of the ones I noticed was that you guys played Oi! Fest in Allentown, PA, right?

Pat: Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeah. Yeah.

Bill: (laughter) I saw that and was just kind of surprised, because when you think of the typical oi! audience, bands, and the general feeling of it…

Pat: We were actually asked to play that! We were very surprised that they asked us to play and at first we were like “why are we going to go play an oi! fest? That’s not us.” At first we resisted and then they said we wanted us to play and we were like “well, maybe it would be interesting.” We knew there were going to be bands there that didn’t agree with our politics.

Bill: Ha, well yeah.

Pat: We sort of thought “why are we going to go play there. We wouldn’t want some of these bands to play a punk festival, why would we want a punk band to be playing their festival?” but then we thought “they want us to play, they asked us to play. We’re not forcing ourselves on it” and we thought it may be interesting to spread our message to people that didn’t like us. When we were playing there were some skinheads with their arms crossed standing around us, you know? But there was a big enough crowd of punks there to see us. There were some good punk bands on that show. The decision after that show was definitely to never play another oi! fest!

Bill: (laughter)

Pat: (laughter) It just didn’t fit, we didn’t fit. It was nice to do it and we got a great reaction from people that wanted to see us.

Bill: It’s one of those things you do just once.

Pat: Yeah, it just wasn’t our element. Why are we doing this? It wasn’t good for us to be there, for many reasons. The way we were handled, the way it was, so I don’t think we’ll ever do it again. The way Paul put it was “You have to go into the den of lions sometimes to spread your message.”

Bill: You mentioned a European tour earlier, how’d that go?

Pat: That one went great, we had an awesome time. It was the first time Reagan Youth was in Europe. We played in Belgium, Berlin… It was interesting playing in Germany, you know? One of the first places we went was Germany. The history of Germany played a lot into the imagery of Reagan Youth and the lyrics.

Bill: Did you run into any problems with that? I know that they have really strict Nazi memorabilia laws there still.

Pat: Yeah, it was funny, we did the song “Reagan Youth” there which has “Sieg Heil” in it and a lot of people told me up front that we shouldn’t do that song. Even the person that booked it said we shouldn’t do it. But we were just like “nah, we’re gonna do it.” It was interesting, right in the heart of Berlin singing that song. I made sure people knew why were singing it. People told us no, but we did it and it went over great. People know what Reagan Youth is about so it wasn’t anything (pause) Yeah people know what Reagan Youth is about so I don’t think anyone was going to have a problem with it, you know? We have the marching soldier on all the merch, a lot of people were buying it so I don’t know what they’re going to do! If they’re putting that on their cars or something, I don’t know. Were weren’t worried about the people as much as we were about bringing our merch through customs, having to declare it and having people open the boxes up and say “oh what is this! Nice, is this a little Nazi soldier on all your stuff?”

Bill: “It’s satire, I swear!”

Pat: It’s just with people who don’t know you or your politics.

Bill: That’s when you’re going to run into shit.

Pat: The lady who booked us told us that in some places no one would ever book us because of that but I’d still like to go there and perform.

Bill: Well it’s like the Oi! Fest thing, you just go in and do it

Pat: You know, it is like the Oi! Fest. We have a message, good music too but there’s a message there and I don’t care who is watching or where we’re playing, we’re going to say what we have to say. If there’s one thing that most of the people can get from it and what they can get behind is hatred is hatred of the American government. (chuckle)

Bill: (chuckle)

Pat: It’s President Bush so, you know? We talked to some German kids and I guess in school they’re taught to hate Bush, so it’s like, wow.

Bill: Jesus.

Pat: But it went over well, we played well. We played the first two shows with The Adolescents.

Bill: Oh cool.

Pat: It was great playing with those guys, you know? It was two old school punk bands, it was really fun. We also played with White Flag.

Bill: Huh, I didn’t even know they were still together.

Pat: The second day we played a festival with Reagan Youth, Adolescents, White Flag and… ah, brain fart. Angelic Upstarts, that’s who it was. That was a really fun show. Europe was really cool, we might be going back later this year to play Spain and Italy. It’s hard to do a long tour for us.

Bill: Yeah.

Pat: For me, no, but the other guys

Bill: The older guys.

Pat: Yeah, they’ve got day jobs and families to support so it’s hard to go there for a long period of time. We’re thinking we might after the new album is done, hopefully next year.

Bill: Yeah do you have any time frame on that? You said you had a couple songs completely done and a couple still in the writing stage. Is there any sort of, I don’t want to say deadline, but sort of a guesstimate on how long?

Pat: Guesstimate we’re hoping to have it done by next year, have it done and out by next year so we can go out and support it. The reason why it’s taking so long is that we’re scrutinizing the songs, you know?

Bill: Yeah, you don’t want to put out crap.

Pat: Yeah we definitely don’t want crap. If you ask Paul, he says over and over again “you know how bands get together after not doing anything for twenty years and they make an album and it sucks? We don’t want to do that and we will NOT do that. Reagan Youth never wrote a bad song and we never will.” I’m listening to the new songs and I feel like they will be great songs. I don’t know if people are necessarily looking for songs like the first album, like they’re looking for another “Degenerated” are going to find it here. Paul and the rest of the guys have become great musicians and it’s hard to go backwards to re-write a song you wrote in tenth grade.

Bill: You can’t.

Pat: You can try.

Bill: But that’s when you end up with the shitty reunion records.

Pat: Exactly. There’s a natural progression to the way they sound and the songs are good. They’re Reagan Youth songs. I don’t know what the initial reaction will be but I’m pretty sure once they hear it and get the album and listen to it a few times they’ll be into it. We’re hoping to have it done by next year, at least the way we’re going right now. It’s taking awhile because we’re all working and we have to pick a day during the week to get together to work on stuff, record it, all that stuff. It’ll probably be released on the label that the other stuff was on.

Bill: New Red Archives?

Pat: Yup.

Bill: That’s cool, I’m looking forward to hearing it.

Pat: The more we tell people we’re doing it the more we actually have to. (laughter) I say to Paul “you know Paul, you told everybody you’re doing a new Reagan Youth album and now you have to deliver.”

Bill: Just kind of resigned to fate that it’s going to happen.

Pat: Yeah you can’t go back on your promises.

Bill: At the shows do you mostly see older guys that were there the first time around or is it generally younger kids, or is it a decent mix?

Pat: It’s a mix, definitely a mix. You get a handful of people who saw the band back in the day and also a lot of people that never saw Reagan Youth the first time around. That’s one of the great things about the band getting back together, is the kids that never had a chance to see you. Reagan Youth got very big, a lot of their success… well I shouldn’t say success but a lot of their notoriety, how known they were, came after the band dissolved, so there were a lot of people who got into them and never thought they’d have a chance to see them in any way, shape or form. Even with the new singer, even with me singing it’s still got guys that wrote these songs.

Bill: Mmhmm.

Pat: Paul wrote these songs along with Dave and the other guys. It still has the spirit of it. No one plays these songs like Paul. They’ve been covered endlessly over the years but no one plays them the way that he does.

Bill: Well I’m just about out, you have any last words or thoughts?

Pat: Um… Uh…. Nope! (laughter) The eye is always watching.

Bill: Alright, cool, thank you very much for your time.